My Definition of Normal

Looking Ahead 2014

At the start of January, I set a goal for myself to keep this blog alive, because, well, in 2013, I blogged for a grand total of 14 times (I checked my annual report). My mum gave me a 2014 planner she got from an insurance company (“Don’t buy it! You can get it free!”) and so I set out to get January checked. Every Wednesday box is marked with “Blog” in green (because it’s something that I enjoy doing) compared to red for urgent stuff (I get sick just looking at the number of red boxes).

Within this goal, I challenged myself to keep up with the “Active Participation Challenge” that I set up for myself last year (in my head) to be more involved in the online community. I’ll have to admit that I’m terrible at physical planning because I over-think and want things to be packed exactly how I want it to turn out. I feel that once you write something down, it’s a promise made and to break that promise would devastate me. I’ve been relying on mental planning for the past few years because I have a crazy way of organizing my thoughts that I just am unable to describe because it’s not a normal kind of organizing. However, I almost always never followed through with my plans just because I could manipulate them however I wanted without leaving ugly cancellation marks. If Participation were graded in the blogging world, I’d have scored a bright red ‘F’. I’m really sorry about this, to my readers, to people I follow, but especially to myself.

Looking back at 2013, I realized that the main reason for me losing steam online was that I had nothing to talk about. I began thinking that I was a huge waste of time. “Come on, who cares what you think?” was my mantra. Also, my friends have moved on with life and are achieving great things and I didn’t want to be a spot of bother in their lives. As I looked deeper into this issue, it hit me that there was something very wrong with the way I think.

Deciding to pour out my soul last week has actually woken me up as to how screwed up (I would use a word starting with ‘f’, but no) I am. I’m not saying that the feeling of darkness went away with an extended period of introspection (if only it would); it shook me out of the bubble I’d sealed myself in. I’m thinking really extreme negative thoughts that may or may not have some truth in them. Just 30 minutes ago, I had to tell myself to snap out of thinking that I’m not worthy of my parents’ love. Couple this with thoughts that I would fail my finals, not get into university, not be able to find a job, walk around as a live example of a failure who was incredibly academic early in life; that’s me now.

I’m going to throw out my guess. I’m not going to outright say it, because if that’s not the cause of this problem, I would be thoroughly embarrassed. Instead, I’m going to call it ‘The Little D’. Well, because it can mean anything from my favourite Dinosaurs to smelly Dung. I’m not going to go into detail as to how I arrived at that conclusion because “ain’t nobody got time for that”. I’m just going to say that it got so bad that I had to take a day off school and ended up in the doctor’s office. Trust me, it’s not fun at all when you’re in the final semester of school.

So one of my biggest goals ever will be dedicated to the year 2014. The year I turn twenty (gah!). I will admit that I am facing some major problems and accept that. I will get help and let people help me without feeling bad. I will re-immerse myself into the world (not very sure that I want to do that…). And to get there, I will have to: